Dr. Clare Graves was a pioneering psychologist who developed a theory of human development called Spiral Dynamics. He conducted decades of research to understand shifting views of human nature. His theory proposes that human thinking evolves through recognizable stages of increasing complexity as people adapt to a changing world. Though controversial in his time, his ideas are now seen as cutting edge and influential in fields like business and future studies.

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Pathfinder on the Mohawk
These pages are dedicated to the life and times of Clare W. Graves,
Professor Emeritus Psychology, Union College, New York, and the
thousands of students who were involved in his original research, and
the thousands of others around the world who have been touched by
the power of his "Levels of Existence" point of view.
-- Dr. Don Beck and Chris Cowan
Visit http://www.clarewgraves.com to review some of Dr. Graves' publications and more about his work.
INTRODUCTION
We had the great honor of knowing and working closely with Dr. Clare W. Graves for the final decade of
his life. Our good friend and mentor lived and worked in the upper Hudson Valley, only a few miles from
the historic Mohawk River and the ErieCanal. He appreciated the history of
the place and understood its geology. When we first met him, Dr. Graves
and his wife, Marian, lived on a picturesque little farm with a pond, a
couple of trotting horses, and a big, feisty, spoiled black cat with no name.
Their two children were grown and had their own families, but continued
living nearby. Over the decade we had the honor of visiting, studying, and
working with Clare Graves we came to increasingly respect the intelligence
and insight of this man, as well as the gracious hospitality of the Graves
household. He had retired early from teaching because of sudden health
problems and, though his body could not manage the rigors of a daily schedule, his mind was as sharp as
ever and hungry to apply his "point of view" to the problems of human existence.
As he often said, some people are born with brains "out of their time." He certainly seems to have been
such a one. Today, his thinking is cutting edge and fast becoming mainstream. But as recently as the late
1970's, his ideas about the development of human nature were a step beyond. Though he retired from
Union College as Professor Emeritus, Graves' began as a relatively obscure teacher of psychology in the
years following World War II. As often seems to happen, wartime energy and post-war euphoria served as
breeding grounds for visionary thinking and bold, new breakthroughs in human knowledge. Such was the
case with Graves. In the early 1950's, at the end of a semester of exploring theories of personality and
human development, he found himself confronting a question he could not answer: "OK, professor. Now
we know Maslow and Rogers and Skinner and lots of others. Which theory is right? Which one
accurately depicts the development of human nature?" He couldn't answer the question and, rather than
continue to rehash older psychological constructs or participate in the debates between the conflicting
theories of the day, he decided to start afresh by searching for the reasons behind shifting views of human
nature. He sensed that all were part of the answer, but none was complete.
Thus, Graves sought to get to the mind of the matter and explore why people are different, why some
change but others don't, and how better to navigate through the emerging and often chaotic versions of
human existence. He conducted elegant studies for thirty years, using batteries of psychological tests,
interviews, and observations. He cross-compared his data with those of all the other theoreticians he could
find. From that mountain of data be built a fresh theory, a next step along the path to understanding who
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we humans are. As he put it:
"Briefly, what I am proposing is that the psychology of the mature human being is an
unfolding, emergent, oscillating spiraling process marked by progressive subordination of
older, lower-order behavior systems to newer, higher-order systems as man's existential
problems change."
In other words, human thinking evolves in recognizable packages as the world around us gets more
complicated and we try to keep up. At the same time, we are constantly altering our world because we are
clever. Graves was one of the first psychologists who understood that we live, act, make decisions, and
undergo change through complex systems. His informal drawings and illustrations would be familiar to
any serious student of quantum physics, general systems, and chaos theory. (Click to access a one minute
audio clip of Dr. Graves discussing his theory, 1974.)
Dr. Graves' orientation was to integrate "bio-," "psycho-," and "socio-,"
thus plowing across the fields human knowledge and breaching the
walls of academia that separated disciplines and departments (not a
favored activity when budgets were on the line). He anticipated and
understood the then yet-to-come surge of discoveries in neurobiology.
As early as 1971 he was pointing to the critical importance of
mind/brain research with a focus on how the mind is shaped by
neurological structures and networks, and how it is activated by the
interaction of chemical agents and life's conditions. Such speculations amounted to heresy in those golden
years of the humanistic views that led to today's political correctness and egalitarian orthodoxy, but
Graves held fast. (He was discussing the difficulty of taking a holistic position when this photo was taken
in 1981 during a weekend spent at the Graves' home with a video crew.) He would often summarize his
point of view in the following constructs:
Human nature is not static, nor is it finite. Human nature changes as the conditions of existence
change, thus forging new systems. Yet, the older systems stay with us.
When a new system or level is activated, we change our psychology and rules for living to adapt to
those new conditions.
We live in a potentially open system of values with an infinite number of modes of living available
to us. There is no final state to which we must all aspire.
An individual, a company, or an entire society can respond positively only to those managerial
principles, motivational appeals, educational formulas, and legal or ethical codes that are appropriate
to the current level of human existence.
So, Clare Graves was a man out of his time. In the late 1970's
Canada's Maclean's Magazine referred to his concept as "the theory
that explains everything" (reprint available). While he would
personally cringe at such a claim, his work is massive and elegant - a
comprehensive thinking process, systems package, and action strategy
whose time had not yet come two decades ago. But time has a way of
sifting the wheat from chaff when it comes to ideas. Constructs with
greater explanatory power and practical application tend to prevail.
Only now, a full decade after his death in 1986, are Graves'
contributions becoming widely known and recognized. The theory of
human emergence, change and transformation he proposed has been
richly fleshed out and validated rather than replaced by contemporary
research.
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Sometimes when looking at the breadth of the theory people will ask,
"But is Graves' work practical?" The answer is: eminently so. While
he was involved in scholarly research as a social scientist, a large
portion of Dr. Graves' work was actually conducted and reported in the
business sector. His article, "The Deterioration in Work Standards,"
appeared in the Harvard Business Review of November, 1967. Not
only did he predict the erosion of America's productivity, but he laid
the foundation for the current interest in total quality and
reengineering. In a nation-wide series of seminars he conducted with
Beck and Cowan in the early 1980's, Graves astonished the business
people in his audiences with his currency and acumen, "nailing" the
problems they were just then realizing lay ahead. As you will discover, the Graves conceptual system
provides the human factors component that the followers of Edwards Deming have been seeking and
others do not yet realize they lack. Value Engineering and Clare Graves run hand-in-hand. His framework
maps out how to transform a company or a culture to make it healthy and receptive for the introduction of
complex technologies and rapid change.
In summer of l984 Don Beck joined with Clare Graves in a presentation of his theory at a major
conference of the World Future Society in Washington, DC, not realizing that this was to be his last public
forum. Don still has fond memories of him bounding out of the taxi at the hotel following his flight from
Albany. He had continued to suffer the ill effects of a series of heart attacks and other medical problems
for a decade, severely curtailing his activities and short-circuiting the popularization of his work. But
Graves's energy level was high on this trip, and he relished the opportunity to let his visionary mind speak
once again.
After the usual introductions, the stage was set. Graves rose up in a majestic pose and in his deep, still
resonant voice bellowed out, "I call my point of view The Emergent, Cyclical, Double-Helix Model of
Adult Biopsychosocial Systems Development." This audience of futurists did what most other groups over
the years had done when he spoke those words. Some sighed, others muttered, a few giggled, and many
exclaimed "uh", "wow" or "oh, no" to indicate they knew their minds were about to be invaded by a
powerful new meme or that they were about to encounter a stream of complicated gibberish they would
probably not understand.
Typically, Graves paused to let the murmur die down - he knew what it was about - before he retorted,
with a twinkle in his eyes: "Well, damn it all, that's what it is!" The crowd roared, then relaxed as he then
explained his point of view with a lucidity and force that left his listeners asking, "Why had we not
thought of this before? Why is something which makes so much sense not more widely known? This is
the key to unlocking some of our most difficult riddles."
The futurists had no way to know how poor health and a scholar's rigorous need to fill in theoretical gaps
had combined to delay the complete presentation of Graves' framework. He fully expected, but was
unable to experience, the revolution in brain/mind research that has fleshed-out his thinking during the
last decade. Yet he knew "emergent" models were coming, and that understanding the interaction of the
many forces impinging upon a person would be the key to the next psychology.
Graves struggled to depict his thinking graphically. (We wish he had had access to virtual reality,
holography, and 3-D computer modeling.) He was attracted to the double-helix of DNA as a visual
metaphor for his "emergent, cyclical" model because it showed the links between two interdependent
strands. Because the parallel strands of DNA do not depict the expansion of conceptual space that occurs
along the developmental track, we converted to a Spiral vortex which better reflects this emergence of
human systems as they evolve through levels of increasing complexity. In fact, many of the original
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Graves drawings rely on just this form so it is quite in line with his thinking. Each upward turn of the
Spiral marks the awakening of a more elaborated version on top of what already exists.
Well, once you start thinking "like a Gravesian," you will find this point of view has the power and
precision to deal with people and social forces of all kinds, from hostile warlords and virulent -ism's to the
relief agencies caring for their victims and peace-keepers befuddled by the mess. Remember that the same
Gravesian principles of Spiral Dynamics apply to a single person, an organization, or an entire society.
Since the model describes human nature in a universal sense rather than through personality types or
racial, gender, and ethnic traits, it provides a common language for grappling with both local and global
problems. It offers a unifying framework that makes genuinely holistic thinking and actions possible. That
was the way Graves thought - how does everything connect to everything else? It is in making
connections - what system(s) fit with whom, doing what, when? - that Spiral Dynamics offers a next tier
of explanatory power.
Go to Spiral Dynamics Home Page
© Copyright 1997-2002, The National Values Center
All Rights Reserved
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